


Strings

by windowcat



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action, Angst, Blood, Death, F/M, Humor, Mature hero story, Pining, Romance, Science Fiction, Slow Burn, Unrequited Love, super powers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-14 12:12:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15388506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windowcat/pseuds/windowcat
Summary: Beverly is an ordinary girl, who's only slightly past 30, but her head is still in the clouds. She's teaching philosophy at a university and taking care of a 13 year old son, alone after her husband passed away. She's currently fixated on a gorgeous new teach at the same school, and passes her time at her TV and going out with her son once in a while. That pretty much sums up her life. Until an unusual encounter brings her out of her comfort zone and makes her awaken an old secret that she's forgotten since childhood.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for stopping by! This is an original story of a not-so-young-anymore woman on the quest to find herself. Plus superpowers and a sassy friend.

 

It was a nice sunny late morning on the campus, not too hot and not too cool, just right to be non-distracting and happily ignored while you were concentrating on important things.

Beverly, a 33-year-old professor of philosophy, was intently examining the globulous rear of a 27-year old math professor, Daniel, who was placing his lunch on an empty table not too far from her outside the main campus cafeteria. She slurped on her ice water from the plastic cup, clutching it tightly with both hands as her eyes were firmly affixed on his well-sculpted figure. The warm spring breeze lightly moved his long-ish raven locks falling over his eyes, as he placed his bag and tray on the table. He swept his hair to the side and sat down to enjoy his lunch, turning his back and the neatly shaped undercut to her.

“You're gonna stare holes in his butt, dude, lay it off already,” quietly nagged her best friend Dalia, a receptionist at the humanities building for the English department. They had just finished their own lunches and were sitting at their table in the post-lunch stretch of time where all the food was gone but there was still time until their break was over.

“Mmhm,” mumbled Beverly, squinting at the unevenly folded collar of the hottie's sky blue shirt.

“You look like a hyena crouching in wait. Ask him out already or just give up, man,” Dalia said without lifting her eyes off her phone.

“Shuduuuup. Let me stare.”

“Aren't you dating that other guy, Gregg?” Dalia turned from her phone and looked at her friend. “Shameless.” She returned into the previous position, shaking her head.

“We went out, like, twice.” Beverly side eyed Dalia, still clutching her cup with the straw in her mouth.

“Aww, poor thing, he probably thinks you two are totally a thing.”

Dalia was a quirky quarter-black woman of indeterminate age, but she was probably in her 20's. She was skinny, a bit taller than average, and despite being only part black inherited many of the ethnic characteristics like her magnificent afro and mirror-black smoky eyes. The other parts of her heritage were something along the lines of Native American and European, maybe some South American, she wasn't sure herself.

Her skin was very light brown color which could pass for a tan, but she considered herself a woman of color, figuratively and literally. She loved colors. She had several streaks in her hair on the front, above a teal hairband, colored pale rose, turquoise, light blonde, and one speck of magenta. She always wore colorful silk dresses that she might or might not have colored herself.

There was a resting bored expression on her like she'd seen it all. She nevertheless loved drama, but only if it was quality. Beverly's ridiculous puppy crush didn't qualify, by far.

“Guess he does, huh. Too bad for him.” Beverly watched how Daniel pulled his phone out and was looking through something, maybe his texts.

“So what, you don't like him?”

“Mmm. He's okay. Nothing to write home about.”

“He's nice though!” Dalia turned all the way towards her to emphasize her point. “Your son needs a father, girl! When are you gonna stop being so picky and get down to earth already?”

Beverly sighed and pulled away from her cup, stretching her arms and dragging them on the table as she leaned back on the chair.

“Brad doesn't look particularly needing of a dad.”

“You think?”

“Yeah.”

“That's not true! He's a boy, and boys need someone to, you know, play with? A father figure? I mean, my dad wasn't always the best, but he was often up to something with my brothers. I was even a little envious of them. Boys need fathers.”

Beverly sighed again and put her chin in her palm. “I guess. But I don't wanna marry someone just for that.”

“No, of course not, gosh!” Dalia rolled her eyes and pointed her gaze back into her phone, scrolling with her thumb with a long flowery nail.

They got quiet for a little while, a comfortable silence between two best friends.

“So you gonna ask the pretty Asian boy out?”

“Half Asian, and no.”

Dalia giggled under her nose and elbowed Beverly, who started to gather cups, utensils, and used napkins into her tray.

“Stop it.”

 

***

 

Beverly started teaching at this school when she became a TA during her Master's program and then PhD. She inherited the tenure after her mentor retired about five years ago. She couldn't call it a career, though, neither was she sure about teaching long-term. She was going through the motions because this was simply the only path available to her.

There was something quaint about this university that she didn't mind. It was small and cozy, forgotten by the rest of the state, and so all of her classes had only handfuls of students. The cute red brick with white trims buildings hid among huge spreading live oaks with petunias, lantanas, sages, and knock-out roses planted around them in concrete flower beds. The atmosphere was peaceful and even serene, despite there being busy and stressed students scattered everywhere along benches, brick tiled paths, and velvety green lawns.

The job made her content. And maybe, she thought, in the future, she'd look back on her years here and finally admit that it made her happy. Sure, having a gorgeous colleague within her field of view every day was a nice bonus. The pay wasn't bad either, although she liked to live frugally.

The object of her admiration, Daniel Cho, a half-Asian half-Portuguese with a PhD in math, started teaching at the school last semester. He was a mysterious new hottie who instantly got famous among the female staff and students alike. Gorgeous manly face with a brilliant smile, broad shoulders, army-boy muscles, over 6 feet tall, he was quite the star. But for Beverly he was more of an abstract fantasy, since he was younger than her, and looking like that he didn't inspire confidence one single bit.

She was a size 6 (with a noticeable stretch), 5'5” with short wavy reddish brown hair with a golden sheen, brown eyes, round baby face and milky pale skin. Plus, as she hit 30, her stomach started to grow uncontrollably even though she hasn't changed her diet or exercise routine. She was only proud of her lips, which she thought were sexy and looked soft and kissable.

Her husband Kendall died several years ago in a fire at his desk job, it was a huge tragedy. She hasn't been particularly looking for a man since then, not because she hasn't moved on, but because she just enjoyed being single. Her husband was a quiet and kind soul, he smiled a lot, and they hardly had any arguments over the years. Their arguments were more like disagreements than heated fights. So, perhaps, deep down, she believed that she had already drawn the lucky straw in her love life with Kendall, and no one that she could reasonably date in her league could ever beat that.

Her son wasn't very anxious to get a father, either. He was introverted and studied or read most of the time and played baseball at school, even though he wasn't particularly athletic. It was a peaceful life, and she didn't want to change that by adding an unknown variable. She just couldn't bring herself to change the status quo. Because of that, she could never even imagine herself dating Daniel. He was a pretty picture, an eye candy that made the days at the university more exciting.

Besides her son, she had a cat at home and a fish tank. The cat was white with gray spots on her head, a timid and cute little creature who loved pets for a limited time. Beverly liked to sew and knit, her TV shows, cooking mags, and of course her profession. She loved philosophy, and she loved to talk about it.

This was her life, and she didn't want any other.

 

***

 

“Today we open the complex and controversial subject of morality. Those that didn't read the chapter for today, which is probably all of you,-”

A couple chuckles were heard in the classroom.

“-what is your definition of morals or morality?”

The class went quiet for a few moments, until a young man in the second row spoke up, “It's something that's right, like a good deed…”

“Right, the study of morality is about right and wrong behavior. Anyone else?”

A girl in the first row raised her hand and Beverly pointed at her.

“It's the collection of beliefs in a culture about proper behavior.”

“Great! Anyone else?” She was sorta trying to steer the class into a deep discussion, but this tactic rarely worked.

“But aren't there like, rules that every one agrees are bad, like, killing and stuff,” another guy in the third row replied.

Beverly smiled at that, this was coming very close to egnaged classroom discussion. “You are both correct! Morality is defined as a system of rules and customs in a given society. For example,” she took a step to the right and immediately remembered that doing the professor walk wouldn't be as graceful as before with a walking boot on her ankle she sprained a week ago. “In some cultures, marrying at fifteen is encouraged and is considered good, while in ours it's illegal. Also, up until about two hundred years ago, disputes in Europe were resolved with duels to the death, and it was considered proper and honorable to defend one's good name and reputation that way. Today that would have been considered crazy and _also_ illegal. Now, are morals absolute? Are there some rules universal for every culture? Is morality relative to the culture it was born in? These are the questions that have seen a lot of disagreement between certain groups of thought. For instance, Christian faith advocates absolute morality, the law established by God, and that it's the same for all humans, regardless of their upbringing, whereas the increasingly atheist circles claim that morality should be relative to culture. In actuality, Christianity teaches that God does not judge people equally, and morality may very well depend on the specific situation, and that seems to be forgotten by lots of people, but anyway.”

She limped back to the left trying to walk as carefree as possible with the boot.

“In recent years, racism and bias in many historical disciplines compelled me, and other researchers, to reexamine our fields of study. And what I noticed was that many of the so-called “universal” moral laws that seemed to be true in many cultures were often brought in by colonization. Many cultures have very different customs and rules to our own, and rampant ethnocentrism and racism prevented some early scientists from seeing objectively the true reality of the various cultures of the world.”

“Nowadays, everyone is familiar with ethics, or the study of proper conduct, especially for businesses and organizations. Everyone has ethical principals they follow, but many of these principals are in fact the product of Western culture and society. We are spreading our morals, our Western views on how to behave properly, on other cultures who may not accept them as easily as we may think. For example, in many cultures time is relative, and they open businesses whenever they're ready, not at the specific our.”

“So, morals are inherently subjective both to the culture and to every individual. What is right for me may be wrong for you, and vice versa.”

She stopped in the middle of the class, facing it.

“So, what do you think?”

The class went quiet again, with the front rows thinking more seriously and the rest of the crowd spacing out.

“But like, killing is bad in every culture, though, right?”

“It depends, Brandon. Your motive for killing might be acceptable in one culture versus another. In our Southern state, for example, you may kill a trespasser on your property without repercussions, whereas it's illegal to even own a gun in many other countries. In other cultures, one may seek revenge for harming on killing a member of their family, and no one will judge them.”

“But still like, if you meet someone on the road and then kill and rob them, that's at least frowned upon in all cultures, right?”

Beverly smiled at the persistent boy who was too hung up on proving a point. “Of course, Brandon.”

“Right,” he nodded and got quiet, satisfied.

“Again, if the one you rob and kill is considered of a lower class it can be okay in some cultures. Up until recently, Spaniards who occupied Central and South Americas could kill local natives without anyone batting an eye, Native Americans weren't even considered humans with a soul back then. Nowadays, if you beat your dog you can go to jail. Again, you're looking at it from your twenty eighteen Western standpoint.”

“Hmm, point.”

 

Brandon's essay for the week was on relative morality of Trump supporters. He got a B.

 

***

 

“Honey, what did Mr. Henkins say about your application?”

Beverly dropped her keys on the wall table and kicked her one shoe off with relief, which, despite having only a two inch heel was still stuffy and tiring.

“He said there was no reply yet.”

“Okay.”

Brad rushed up the stairs to his room, taking off his backpack, while Beverly hopped to the kitchen to prepare dinner.

“Honey?” She asked at dinner, where it was quiet for a while.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think I should get married?”

Brad looked up at the ceiling, chewing on his sandwich, thinking. “I dunno,” he shrugged.

“I mean, do you want me to get married? Do you want a dad?”

He shrugged again, “depends.”

Beverly grinned, “of course it does. But like, if I meet a really good man, would you mind if I marry him?”

“No, I won't, it's your business.”

She sighed and stared at her plate. “I don't feel like I'm dying to date and marry someone.”

“Then don't.”

“But what about you? Don't you want, I dunno, someone to play baseball with? Like, you know, how dads play catch ball or whatever with their sons?”

“I'm thirteen, mom, I have a girlfriend, and I already play baseball at school. At this point I'm probably better than your average dad.”

“Ugh, right, you are. But what about other “man” activities? Like fishing? Building stuff? I dunno…”

“I hate mosquitoes, so I'll definitely be a terrible fisherman, and I'm not very good with lumber, so nope, still not buying it.”

“I'm not trying to _sell_ it! I'm just asking if you're fine without a dad. You know? Maybe all your friends have dads and it's awesome, and you always wanted a cool dad, too.”

“Nope. Robert has two moms, Charli just has a mother, and Zach lives with foster parents. None of them have cool dads. But if you want to, I wouldn't mind if you marry a nice man. I think you deserve it. I mean, I'm dating, why shouldn't you?”

She looked at him, a small copy of his father, and ruffled his hair with her hand.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Beverly and Dalia were sitting on the benches at the college's track field. It was overcast and a little cool and windy, but Beverly liked this spot, where she could take off her walking boot and exercise her ankle, placing it on the back of the bench in the row in front of her.

She sprained her ankle last week at the gym, going down the stairs after lower body exercises, which made her legs weak and wobbly. She didn't fall, but she stumbled and stepped wrong on her ankle. The doctor said it was pretty bad but she'll be back to normal in a month.

This was early morning before her first class, and, incidentally, Daniel was at the same track field, running laps. She knew he'd be here, because Daniel's exercise routine was common knowledge among his fans. She'd seen him jog here a few times herself, while walking from her car to school. However, today she came here solely to exercise her foot, and so what if her crush was using the same facilities? It was a coincidence, nothing more.

“It's still a little swollen,” Dalia commented on her friend's ankle protected from the cold by a black sock.

“Yeah, it still hurts.” She turned her foot carefully back and forth, as much as she could without feeling too much pain.

“Guess I won't be seeing you at the gym for a while.”

“Yeah, you gotta have to exercise all by your lovely self.”

“Aww! But at least you can get this nice view every morning while you exercise your foot.” Dalia stretched her arms to point at the sole running figure on the track.

“Ugh,” Beverly glanced at him for a moment and drew her attention back to her foot.

“I agree, though, he's really easy on the eyes.” She propped her feet on the back of the same bench Beverly was exercising her ankle on, elbows on her knees, and put her chin in her hands, watching him.

“He's probably gay,” Beverly said deadpan.

“What?” Dalia flinched and turned to her.

“Yeah, he hasn't been seen with a girl since he started teaching here. I mean, look at him, he probably gets proposals every week. The fact that no girl has captured his eye yet can only mean he's gay.”

“Hmm, is that what you tell yourself to feel better? Did you ask him?”

“Dude, I can't talk to him. I get too nervous. And I mean… I'm not nervous to talk to him, just of the fact that my fantasy may be ruined. What if he hates cats? Or he's distant or rude? Or stuck up? No thanks, I have a nice picture of him in my mind, I don't wanna ruin that.”

Dalia laughed, throwing her head back. “You're _hopeless_!”

“I guess,” Beverly stopped exercising her foot and looked towards Daniel with a serious face, “What I'm scared of most is, what if he turns out to be a sweetheart and I fall for him for real? Then what?”

Dalia let out a short snicker, “Like you're in any better situation right now. I think you got it bad already, man.” She looked at Beverly from the side with a small smile.

Beverly chuckled and looked down to put her foot back in the walking boot. “I don't got it. I like him, that's true, but it's totally shallow and not serious. If he got a girlfriend… or boyfriend, I'd continue to stare, because I just like the outside.”

“Oh girl, soooo shallow!”

“Yeah. No regrets. What about you though? Met anyone yet?”

Dalia stared at the gray skies above and paused for a moment. “Nah.”

“I'm seriously curious what kinda guy you'd like, though. You're kinda all up there somewhere.”

“Am I?” She rolled her head to the side to look at Beverly.

“You're such a good artist, and your apartment is a mess… It's gotta be an amazing guy, just like you are.”

“Aww! Thank you babe! You're so sweet!” She leaned over and placed her head on Beverly's shoulder.

Beverly smiled, but in reality she just wanted her friend to date someone already so they both could gossip about their crushes like two teenage girls. Having this one-sided romantic development was a little unbalanced, and their recent conversations would all veer into this territory, which was getting a little old.

She decided to keep any news about Daniel to herself from this point on, since, let's be honest, Dalia wasn't interested in him, she just cared about Beverly. And since there was no chance they'd actually date, there was no need to feed her false hope.

In fact, there was actually a small fan group of girls (mostly) on the school's discord server, where she could have potentially interacted to talk about Daniel. Beverly has only seen the group once when she ventured into the girl's discussion chat, but it was getting a little crazy there with inside jokes and memes. She left the chat without saying a word.

Beverly was indeed dating another guy anyway. She met Gregg online on match.com. He was decent looking, blue eyes, brown hair, her age, but they just didn't click. There was nothing she liked about him. He had terrible insecurities, even though she couldn't see any reason for them. He was kinda immature, to be fair, and given his slightly below average height, he looked downright infantile. She had to choose the places to go and activities to do for the two of them, and he'd be just fine with everything. If they disagreed on anything, he immediately took her side and backed off. If he was doing it on purpose, then he was dead wrong about women.

He'd write her texts every day, to wish her a good morning and ask her what she had for breakfast, he was trying his best to be nice and polite. She appreciated it, but it just wasn't enough.

She's never done this before, hopping from date to date, seeing a different guy every month, but she wasn't sure why she was doing it. She said it herself that she didn't need to be in a relationship. Maybe she was curious about what fish was out there, to see if they weren't all bad?

But every time, after a date on the weekend, she was happy to see Daniel again the next week in school in one of his usual places. It has become a habit for her to watch him from a distance, see him doing well, smiling while talking to people, listening to music at the gym, and if he was okay, that meant that the earth was still spinning, and the world wasn't ending. The little gazes at him from the sidelines gave her much more happiness and assuredness than her weekly dates, so much so that she was looking forward to every Monday.

She pondered about it while sitting on a game where her son's team was playing against another school. She sipped her coffee from a Styrofoam cup, since the game lost her a while ago, and seriously thought about all that dating. She'd seen three guys by now, including Gregg, and she liked none of them. She wasn't sure what she even wanted from a man. She kept constantly comparing every one of them to Kendall, and consciously forcing herself to not do that.

Kendall was her very first boyfriend, they met at a party in college, and by that time she didn't have any experience with boys. But after he died and she suddenly became available again, she realized that she didn't even know herself that well. She didn't know what she wanted from life in general, not just what kinds of guys she was attracted to (besides the hot ones). She never actually sat down and thought about everything.

“Guess I'm just really confused,” she thought.

And since childhood, every time she felt confused, her kneejerk reaction was always to withdraw and focus on something else. So, naturally, she canceled all the dates and started watching youtube cooking videos.

***

Beverly was walking, or limping, down a science building hallway to deliver a filled out form to the HR department, which was for some reason on the fourth floor of this building. She was on the second floor which connected to the second floor of the humanities building, and the elevator was all the way at the end of the hall. There was a wall of floor to ceiling windows all along the hallway on the right with views of the parking lot and nice wooded areas around it, and on the left, there was a row of classroom doors. She slowly progressed down the hallway without a care in the world, enjoying the nice views out the windows, when her eyes wandered into an open classroom on the left.

She nearly jumped when she saw Daniel inside, moving tables. He didn't see her, but he probably heard her walking boot slow down as she passed the room. He disappeared into the room, and then suddenly walked out, heading with his large frame on a collision course with her. She froze, and her eyes went up his chest to his beautiful face, lingering on it longer than necessary.

His face had just a touch of Asian features, pretty almond shaped dark blue-gray eyes, perfect nose, high forehead, and pale skin. Seeing it up close, one would be in disbelief that such a pretty being could be so physically near them and not on some magazine or TV show.

She couldn't get out of the way fast enough with her boot, but he sidestepped and walked around her.

“I'm so sorry,” he said and went down the hall towards the elevator.

He disappeared around a corner up ahead, and she sighed a huge breath of relief. Her heart was beating so fast from being startled, she felt like a rabbit who'd come face to face with a wolf. With shaky hands she pressed her folder closer to her chest and limped the rest of the way to the elevator constantly replaying the vision of his face in her mind.

She was pretty sure the classroom she saw him in wasn't the one he was teaching in. Those were classes for upper level physics courses, what was he doing in one of them wasn't clear. And why was he straightening tables??? Something was definitely weird.

Gasp!

What if he was seeing someone in there and was trying to erase the evidence of their passionate meeting?!

When she was at the elevator, she saw three girls standing there with their backpacks on their backs. This was late afternoon, most students were already done with classes, but it still wasn't uncommon to see students at this hour on campus.

“Oh my gosh, Dr. Cho is so hot, though, did you see those pecs showing through his shirt,” said a blonde girl in jeans and a hoodie.

“I know, right, he always wears tight clothes, and it's like, is he doing that on purpose?” said another, a strawberry blonde with a short plaid shirt and a sweatshirt.

The third girl just stood quietly.

“I knooow! But like, he's also so nice, he comes to the tutoring sessions for his class every time-”

“Yeah!”

“-and then cleans up after us, like who does that?”

“He's kinda dense though,”

“You think?”

“Yeah, I saw that girl at the front flash her cleavage at him and stuff, ugh, so annoying! But he didn't even react in any way.” Blondie stared into her phone and stepped into the elevator with the others following her.

“I dunno,” said the third girl finally, and her voice was deeper and louder, but pleasantly so. “He's kind of a dork, to be honest.”

The other two laughed, looking at her. Beverly was the last one to enter the elevator, and she continued to listen in to their conversation with full attention, pretending not to care.

“He's a little clueless, so I think all the flirting goes right over his head,” continued the girl with the loud voice.

“True,” admitted Blondie, smiling.

“Yeah, I agree, he's attractive, and we're blessed to have him as our instructor. But dating him? No thanks.”

The other girls chuckled and got back into their math exam discussion. When the elevator door opened, Beverly walked out and realized that she'd gone down to the first floor with the girls, whereas she was supposed to go up to the fourth floor. Embarrassed, she slipped away into the staircase and ascended to the fourth floor on foot.

 


End file.
